PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. ale 
as they do to the startlingly new conditions which confront them when they 
pass over the seas, and swell the tide of population in great centres of 
industry and enterprise such as that in which we stand to-day. Their 
educational vision, however, has had such a narrow and limited horizon 
that no wonder a large proportion are not very adaptable to the 
practical life of the prairie and the forest, or even of the counting- 
house and the office stool. Am I, or am I not correct in hazarding 
the conjecture that many specimens of this really fine English breed from 
the old country come to you here in this Dominion without an elementary 
knowledge of the laws of the world in which they live, full of antiquated 
prejudice and tradition, derived principally from the straitened area of 
their island-home experience, so that not seldom they put their hand to the 
plough (either literally or metaphorically) and look back, becoming wastrels 
instead of forceful citizens in this ever-widening Empire? ‘No English 
need apply’ has been, if I mistake not, written as a memorandum inside the 
breast of more than one leader of industry in this great continent, and small 
wonder is it when the cramping character of the ultra-medieval training 
which our young men have received at some of our historical public secondary 
schools in England is taken into account. 
What remedy (you may ask) have I to propose? My answer is this: I 
want to force upon the attention of English educationists certain Imperial 
factors which should occupy an indispensable place in the educational 
curricula of the great schools in the Mother Country. 
I would give a prominent place to the scientific teaching of geography, 
and particularly to historical geography, with special reference, of course, 
to the origin, growth, and progress of the British Empire. Such a volume 
as the ‘Sketch of a Historical Geography,’ by Keith Johnston, should be 
placed in the hands of every boy, and be known by him from cover to cover. 
It can hardly be realised that in many of our great classical schools to this 
day not more than one or at most two hours a week are devoted to this 
subject, and that it is often not taught at all beyond the middle classes in a 
school. 
Again, I would enforce an elementary knowledge of science on every 
boy who passes through the stage of secondary education. 
I am aware that many hard things have been said about the teaching 
of science in secondary education. A learned professor, who is the Presi- 
dent of another Section of the Association, has passed his opinion that, as 
taught in our schools, it has proved of little practical or educational value. 
But because the methods employed have been halting, insufficient, and 
unscientific, it by no means follows that it should be left out of the category 
of school subjects. On the contrary, it appears astounding that two-thirds 
of the public school boys of England should grow to man’s estate without 
even an elementary knowledge of the laws of the world in which they live. 
Lord Avebury, in his Presidential Address at the International Moral 
Education Meeting held in London last autumn, told his audience an 
amusing story of how, walking back one beautiful summer night from the 
House of Commons arm-in-arm with a leading luminary on the Government 
benches, his companion, who had been at Eton and Oxford, gazing at the 
greater luminary in the heavens, pensively observed: ‘I wonder, my dear 
Lubbock, whether we shall ever know why the moon changes her shape once 
a week at least?’ 
To one who aspires to seek his fortune in the wide and half-unexplored 
continents of Greater Britain the value of the knowledge of chemistry, geo- 
logy, botany, and arboriculture, can hardly be over-estimated. And yet many 
present here could bear critical witness to the fact that a large proportion 
of young men go out to the North-West totally unequipped after their 
public school training with even the most elementary knowledge of those 
departments of science to which I have alluded. No wonder, again, ‘No 
